February 2, 2017 • 56 mins
In the not too distant future, sex may not involve being in the same room as your partner. In fact, your partner may not even have to be a human. We're talking virtual sex here. Couple VR with high tech, smart sex toys and intercourse as we know it may be a thing of the past. Except not really.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. Sex sex
sex sex sex sex sex x sex sex x x
(00:23):
sex sex x sex. I was gonna say we should
do a C O A, but maybe that qualifies. I
think so too. Uh, parents, this is going to be
a show that you may I want your kids to
listen to. We'll just didn't say that. Yeah, it's about
some adult business, that's right. Yeah, freaky stuff. Goodness, how
(00:44):
are you? I'm doing good. I still have a little
bit of the the nose juice for the most part.
I'm I'm good. My energy is up. You dude, I
have to show you next time I blow my nose,
I have to show you. This looks like it's it's
oh no, no, no, no no. It's like Cheetos colored
(01:06):
and intensity. I I've never seen anything like it before,
and it's coming out of my head. That's weird, orange
orange yellow day glow. Well, I might as well talk
about my sickness. Yeah, how are you feeling well? I
had as you know, um and as you also even further, No,
about once a year I get a stomach flu. Even
(01:27):
though I think I took last year off, I don't
think I ever got it last year. I don't think
you did either. But uh so, my daughter waits eighteen
full months before she throws up for the first time,
which is a nice run, and she comes in the
kitchen the other she's like Jerry Seinfeld had really long
run too. She comes in the kitchen and just projectile
vomits all over the place out of nowhere, and um,
(01:51):
you know, isn't feeling well and has some like uh
some some diarrhya going on. Why this show was really
getting off to a gross start. But two days after that,
I'm like, I'm invincible, Like I've I've avoided this. That's
a bad thing, I think. I hope you didn't say
it out loud. I think I might have. And then
a two days ago at four pm, it's like, I
(02:14):
feel a little weird. Five minutes later I was throwing up.
And then six hours after me, it hit Emily. So
she was able to at least care for our child
until she went to bed, and then she was like,
I'm not feeling so good either, And then my mom
thankfully came through and uh and took our child from
(02:34):
the sick house, and then Emily and I literally all
night long, we each had a bathroom at our disposal,
and it was just like every thirty minutes, somebody in
the house was like, man, it was really bad. I mean,
it was just it was one of those things where
we pulled the curtains. We were just like, I didn't
even want to look at each other. It was just gross.
(02:54):
But I'm I'm you know, it's a twenty four hour
thing generally, And yeah, you said you told Jerry that
it was like twenty four hours to the minute. Uh,
pretty much. I mean I started feeling better at about
four or five yesterday. But I'm just just weak, you know, man,
Like it just takes a lot out of you. And
I feel like, of you know, I'm not big on
the ad workout, but I feel like, I know, you
(03:17):
look ripped. Oh dude, I might have Like I feel
like I really might have pulled muscles in my rib
cage from wretching. It's funny, all right, So no one
else is listening anymore. No, let's talk about virtual sex. Yeah,
we chased everyone off. This is a good plan. Hats
off to you, so chuck. Yes, people invented the Internet,
(03:41):
and within about I don't know, eight or nine seconds,
there was a porn side up right, probably yeah, and
since then apparently, um, it's it's been largely overstated. But
but most people associate the Internet, at least in part
with photography. Really, Oh you're kidding, Well, what do you
(04:02):
mean associate? Like like when when you think of the Internet,
you think, well, that's a vast repository of pornography. I
don't know if that's the case. I think a lot
of people do. Okay, Um, but there's a lot of
pornography on the Internet, and in fact, the Internet has
helped just foster pornography into you know, by by by
(04:25):
light speed. It's just virgin right. But it turns out, um,
apparently one study I saw in two thousand and eleven
estimated that only one point five percent of all web
pages are sexual sex based one. Well, that was really
surprised to hear that. Yeah, but I mean that's just
(04:48):
a numbers game. Sure, I mean there's there are literally
millions of porn sites. But doesn't that doesn't that seem
low though? Even even considering the point is people still
all do like sex and pornography, and they like the Internet.
And when it when the thing when they were put together,
everything just blew up. Like apparently now the the Internet
(05:10):
porn industry alone globally is worth something like forty to
fifty billion dollars. I saw that in a two article
in the Economist. That's a ton of cash. Man. That's like,
that's how much like the Disney company is worth. They're
not gonna like that. Their name is you know, I
(05:31):
just pulled that out of the air. Yeah, good choice. Um.
But one of the things, like I said, when when
the Internet um further pornography, it hasn't stopped, it hasn't plateaued.
It's like, oh great, here's a here's a website that's
got porn on it. We've achieved peak Internet pornography. Like that,
(05:51):
some of the most um innovative thoughts to developing the
Internet further has been based on pornography. Yeah, just when
you think they've covered it all, somebody's like, hey, you
like to, uh take a Christmas ham and carve out
a hole and put your foot in it. We got
(06:12):
a website for that, your foot called hamfoot dot com.
Oh man, you better hurry up to trademark that before
we released this episode. And by the way, when you
this article was written by Robert lamb our own uh
colleague here of stuff to blow your mind when you
read it, did you like, how did you feel just
(06:36):
hearing it in Robert's voice? In my head? I don't know,
maybe that's something with it. I just wanted to take
a shower. Like if Robert, if he typed the word
lovers like one more time, I was I was literally
just I don't I've never liked that word with you,
and especially not coming from Robert like him. And I
think he used the word lovers in here like six times,
(06:58):
like you know, he was wearing a silk robe and
he wrote this. Yeah, I can't imagine how much like
graphics stuff got edited out from his first chap uh.
But we're talking about the future of simulated virtual sex,
not necessarily robot sex um because that's a different thing.
(07:21):
And we actually we did a whole episode on that, remember,
I think it was called like will we Marry Robots?
Because we were trying to be above the board. But
we talked a lot about that, but that that's not
what this episode is about now. This is a little
bit more about UM using technology to either simulate sex
or two and I found out in a lot of cases,
(07:44):
and we'll go through it as we talk about some
of these specific things. A lot of them seem geared
towards UH or at least they're marketed as like, hey,
are you in a long distance relationship? Like, you know,
we can help bring you closer by sort of synchronizing
UM phone sex in a way, like just a super
(08:07):
advanced form of phone sex, right right. And that's definitely
like the the genteel way of putting it, because I
think probably more to the point, it's hey, do you, um,
i'd like to have internet sex with people you don't know? Well,
have we got some technology coming down the pike for you. Yeah,
And they don't say, hey, are you super lonely and
(08:27):
like and you know, it's easy to laugh about, like
the lonely dude in his house, but there there are
you know, they're genuine phobias, and like, this could be
a benefit to people who who aren't, like literally aren't
able to certain conditions to go out and have real sex.
You know, sure about that, but it's it's a real
(08:50):
it could be proved to be a real benefit. Yeah,
holders are gonna love this stuff. The the other thing
that that almost sounds like what you just said was
like a mid term goal of UM, of the future
of internet based sex, right, But ultimately from everything I'm seeing,
the ultimate goal, or maybe not even goal, but what
(09:11):
will probably prove to be the ultimate reality is um
that sex will be so improved and and perfectly refined
by science and technology that we we will end up
preferring it and and I mean, like the normal average
human will end up preferring simulated sex over the actual
(09:34):
real thing. I don't know, man, I mean that's a uh,
that's that sounds like one of those things that that
people in fifty years will look back and be like,
what idiots, you know, they got that really wrong. But
it also seems like, I don't know, people like, uh,
people like good sex, you know. Yeah, but it's like
(09:56):
simulated sex is to real sex as soilent is to food.
Well that's that's so I guess we can talk about
it now. Um, there's the basis of it. Is not
like everybody just going to be um these uh just
completely what's the word I'm looking for? Just this crazy
(10:18):
promiscuous people all just having anonymous internet sex with people
all over the internet. That will that will probably be
a very real possibility. Um, I mean it already is,
but this actual virtual like convincingly simulated sex um will
eventually be a possibility. What I've seen that will be
more likely is that people will be in monogamous relationships
(10:40):
like they are now, but rather than doing it, you
will go with your like your separate rooms and do
it remotely using the simulations, right, or it potentially could
be a way too, maybe relieve the uh, the incland
nation to step out on your husband or wife, yeah,
(11:03):
and say, you know what, I'm not gonna cheat on you.
I'm gonna you know, it's just a very technologically advanced
form of masturbation. Sure, But that also, like I can
definitely see couples where say, like, you know, that's fine,
that's great, go get your rocks off with the computer lady.
But I also see like, no, no, no, that's not
that's terrible. Yeah, and I think that's already an issue now,
(11:27):
Like you know, are you sure with porn sites or
porn sites or webcam people like whatever, But when you
when you add this element and This is ultimately what
we're talking about, Chuck, is the progression toward adding actual
physical sensation too to internet sex. Um that this it
(11:50):
just opens up the whole idea of cheating like even further,
you know, like you wouldn't have to use your imagination
any longer because your body is being physically manipulated to
to recreate the sensations of having sex in real life.
I feel like we should take a break. I think
so too. I think we really set this one up
so high that we can't possibly deliver from now on.
(12:13):
All right, well, let's take a break and uh, I'm
gonna go have a talk with Robert Lamb and we'll
be back right after this. All right. So Robert Lamb
(12:47):
points out that every lover's embrace is essentially since data.
And that's true. It's um, you know, it's touch, smell, uh, sound,
it's it's like all the sensory data that we get
from you know, eating an apple or something is the
same with sex the sexy times. But he asked a
(13:10):
very pertinent question here, and that's kind of what we're
after is how far can you go to digitize and
transmit that information? And uh, touch is probably the best
the obvious starting point, right exactly, because if you step
back and you look at the the landscape of internet
sexuality today, right, it's all all of it is visual,
(13:35):
the entire thing. I mean there's audio too, so it
is um oral and visual. And I mean the au
are a l um Now. I had a joke I
had to really fight to not say out loud, well
email it to me, okay, um. But so basically, the
the current state of internet sex uses your eyes and
(13:58):
your ears, and that's it, right, yeah, And everything that
we have is based on that, and there's but that's
that's not to say that that's not going to play
a part in the future of sex. It's just that's
the bedrock, the basis that's been laid, and now they're
trying to develop it based on that bedrock. And like
you said, the next step is touch. Yeah, and if
(14:20):
we're going to talk about technology and touch, um haptic technology,
which we've talked about. We've talked about this before, haven't
we in some capacity? Surely maybe it was a trans
cranial The thinking cap was that maybe I don't know,
it doesn't ring a bell to me, honestly, all Right, Well, anyway,
haptic technology is that that's gonna have a lot of applications.
(14:44):
It's essentially I mean, if you're talking about uh, non
sexy time stuff. It ranges from uh, telesurgery like literally
a doctor being able to perform a surgery that's not
in the room, um, which could be amazing, you know,
in a lifet having technology or like military training, space,
NASA space exploration, stuff like that. But it's essentially technology
(15:10):
that uh is. It's it's wearable. I mean they talk
about gloves a lot, but it takes it can take
the form of a shirt that you wear that sends,
you know, pulses of stimulation through that device, whether it's
a glove or a shirt to your body, right exactly.
So it's it recreates the sensation of touch, right. Yeah.
(15:32):
And the weird thing is when I started researching this,
I was like, you know, what is touch? You take
it for granted, but um, one of the things that
they're going for is when you when you touch something,
what you're really doing. Like let's say you pick up
a vase. Yes, you're you're picking it up, but as
far as your sense of touch is concerned, that vase
(15:54):
is exerting pressure on the inside of your hand, and
haptic gloves in particular are concerned with recreating that pressure
um against the inside of your hand to make it
feel like when you're looking online and you're virtually grabbing
a vase that in real life, the pressure that you
(16:15):
would normally be feeling is being recreated by a number
of different means. And they've got a lot of different
technologies that are competing right now in the prototype space
for coming up with this kind of haptic technology that
can recreate it. Like, there's one did you see that
thing I sent you about the haptic glove that uses ultrasound. Yeah,
that's out of the University of Sussex in uh jolly
(16:38):
old England, and it's called skin Haptics is a system
and yeah, he uses ultrasound pulsing, this focusing basically this
haptic feedback onto the surface of your skin so it
feels like I mean, right now, it's not just like
sexy stuff they're talking about, uh, like a like an
(16:58):
interface that doesn't exist in front of you, right right.
So there there's a couple of different ones. One actually
uses ultrasound to disturb the air in mid air so
when you go to press a button with your finger,
the ultrasound a non existent button, right exactly. Um, the
ultrasound creates an enough air turbulence where your fingers going
(17:22):
that you're you get a bit of resistance from it.
You feel pressure, which is awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. This
other the other skin I think skin haptics version, actually
sends the the ultrasound pulse through your hand so that
you feel it from its pulsing from the back of
your hand through your hand, and then the sensation is
(17:43):
being felt on your palm, so it's recreating it coming
in the reverse direction. But it feels like, say you're
picking up a vase. Yeah, and now is that with
a glove or is that just the ultrasound through the air.
That second one is with the gloves, So so the
other one is like, say a screen that's mounted next
(18:04):
to an oven is using ultrasound from the screen on
the countertop to disturb the air above it in mid air.
That's different. The the glove is sending it from the
back of your hand to the front of your hand.
And I keep saying it's like you're grabbing a base.
But really, with what we're talking about. It's they're trying
to recreate what it feels like to say, grab a boob.
(18:28):
I mean, that's what they're doing here, right. So so
you know the connect controller for I think Microsoft came
out with it for Xbox a few years back, and
um like, within literally within a month, there was an
open source controller. It still is and within a month
somebody released a um like a connect porn game. Sure, right,
(18:52):
And so if you look at the videos of this,
did you see any of them, uh of the Xbox
thing or the other thing, the Xbox one, No, I
did not see that one. So it's basically the demo
is a guy like kind of feeling up a c
G I lady, right, okay, And and if what he's
(19:14):
doing is it's all visual. What they're trying to get
is with with haptic devices is that visual thing, but
then you will feel what you're seeing on screen. That's
that's the next step that people are working on as
far as the Internet sex is going, Yeah, trying to
synchronize well, well we'll get to that, but yeah, trying
(19:35):
to synchronize these things to where you're looking at something
and if you and it just matches up the feel
and the and the visual all matches up right, So
you get the visual to begin with, that's already done.
That now you have, thanks to the say VR connect,
you can move your hand in this world and it
translates onto your computer the virtual world, and then that
(19:58):
so that's done. Then next step again is recreating the
sensation of touch from that virtual world into this world.
So I thought you were talking about the um that
that website, the sex game website. Oh three d x chat.
Did you go to that one? Yes? Holy cow? Yeah
(20:21):
warning warning, uh, very graphic website. Yeah, we're not saying
that to all the fourteen year olds because I think
every fourteen year old live has been there, but the
year old had not. Yeah, I hadn't either. I had
no idea. It was a thing. I was like, what
is that kept popping up in uh in in research,
and I went and looked. I was like, no way, Yeah,
(20:44):
it's um that is a sex game and it's you.
You're you have an avatar, but game game is uh,
you're using that loosely. It's almost like second life. It's
like a hangout, like virtual chat, like life based. Yeah,
like you you have a you design your your dude,
to your lady, and you go into a bar and
(21:05):
you're hanging out, and then you take that person back
to your apartment and you have like really graphic uh
you know, animated sex. Right, but the person you're picking
up is an actual person in real life as well.
It's their avatar. It's not like you know, you're you're
picking up a sim or something. Right. So, and that's
that's apparently like really big right now. A year that's
(21:29):
what it cost. Yeah, you get to that's a weird number, man,
I know, and it's not even ninety two. I rounded up.
It's like, I don't I don't know. They found that
was a tipping point. Yeah, exactly, No, they won't pay
ninety nine. They'll pay. We pulled a few perverts in
our town and they said a hundred dollars, no way.
(21:50):
But they got confused around the marks. So that we
want that, so, Chuck, we we were largely talking about
with Haptick devices, um the love it's not just the glove.
That's a that's a big first step, but ultimately the
goal is going to be a basically a haptic full
body suit to where this the pressure, incense and warmth
(22:12):
and everything that has to do with touch is recreated
all over your body because your hands are great, but
you know, there's still just your hands. As far as
internet sex is concerned, that that full body haptic suit
is going to be the holy Grail, and apparently it's
not that far off. There's a a guy who founded,
(22:32):
um a company called Shadow Robot Company. Uh that sounds creepy. Well,
actually they make anthropomorphic robot hands for um like people
who have had a limb ampitated. It's like a legit
robot um company that he just happened to be quoted right.
His name was Richard Greenhill, and he said that, um,
(22:54):
I think it was last year in an article he
said that hap full body haptic suits are just a
few years away. Probably Yeah, that'll be huge. But in
the meantime, there's been these baby steps that have been
taken over the years. And one of the first I
guess kind of prototypes of a haptic suit was a
haptic shirt called the hug Shirt. Yeah, I don't. I looked.
(23:17):
I went to their website and I didn't see I
mean it said by it now, So I kept on
it to see how much it was and then it
didn't come up so I don't know if it's not
at market yet, but the idea is is it's a
shirt and this is the you know, the most g
rated part of this show, because it's a shirt that
simulates a hug, yeah, which is pretty sweet. Company UK
(23:38):
company called Cute Circuit and I think they came out
with it back in like two thousand one or two,
and they I think they released them for sale in
like two thousand five or six or something like that.
But basically, you are wearing your, um, your hug shirt.
You're connected to the internet via the hug Shirt app,
and then you're you're, UM, your lover, your lover. Man,
(24:04):
I was gonna say a little sweetie was on the
other end, but lovers fine, um, and they're wearing their
hug shirt connected to the app. So when you simulate
a hug, right, you hug yourself wearing the hug shirt,
it transmits that hug to your right and they feel
(24:25):
the sensation of the hug you just sent transmitted through
their hug shirt. It's pretty it's awfully sweet. Yeah. I
wanted to I want to know what this feels like,
you know, I wanted to sample one. Yeah, well, I
mean We're on a pretty great streak of not doing
the stuff that we're talking about, So why start now?
You know? Well I couldn't, you know, I tried to
buy one, but I didn't see where you could. Did
(24:47):
you see a very nice man named Don Kent who
gave us plenty of the Elder before sent us a
box of soiling? Oh wonderful. Yeah, well, let's try it
on air. Okay, okay, Oh man, that's a eight idea.
We'll have to set it up in another episode just
so that it has all the proper introductions. We'll just
say this so that everybody can get really excited about it. Yeah,
(25:08):
I'm excited already. Uh. So the other simulator that um
is in prototype mode. There's something called the Kiss Transmitter
from Kajumoto Laboratory at Tokyo's University of electro Communications, and um,
did you see this thing? Yeah? I was very much
turned off by that. Yeah, it's at least right now
(25:29):
unless the prototype has advanced. It's supposed to simulate French kissing.
But it was a box. Uh and it looked like
a bent drinking straw that just went around in a circle. Yeah.
And they showed some poor undergrad who is having to
demonstrate it, and they were doing close ups of his
(25:50):
mouth and this thing swirling around with It's not pleasant
at all, No UM, but the Kissinger, well hold on
with just with the with the the kiss transmitter. I
think the idea is eventually that that um straw will
be a tongue, which would makes a lot more sense.
But the trick to this is it doesn't just spin
in a circle. What it does is it uh, it
(26:13):
works with you like when you are moving your tongue around,
it is reciprocating in likewise fashion. So it's not just
willie Nilly spinning around in a circle. It's it's it's
smarter than that. Yeah. So there was this other thing
called the Kissinger. I did see that that was really creepy.
So that one, this one makes a lot more sense
(26:36):
to me. It's it's actually the PhD project of Emma
yan Zang out of the City University of London and
UM this thing. It was originally a box that connected
via USB to your laptop that you kissed and it
had like kind of almost cartoonish lips attached to it
or whatever. And then the newer prototype is this UM
(26:59):
this thing that you connect to, say your iPhone, and
so it's it's connected to the web through an app.
And when it's got this, I guess the mouth interface
is just this um, this pad almost a touchpad area
that you kiss, right, yes, And as you're kissing it,
(27:19):
it is taking in the movement and pressure of your lips,
sending it through the app to your lover yeah um
on the other end, and recreates the kiss to them.
But what's cool is it's bidirectional, so while they're kissing
you back, you're receiving their kiss. Yeah. What's the disturbing
(27:40):
part to me is is that it comes in the
form of like a little round bunny rabbit. Oh yeah, yeah,
you didn't see it. Oh that was the first version. Oh,
the second version is conversion. The second version is much
less like they basically threw out any attempt to make
it look like a mouth. It just it funk sans
(28:00):
like it. It doesn't look like it because I think
they probably you were probably in the majority of people
who are like, I'm not kissing that thing. Well, yeah,
I mean it was a little it looked like a
little round like Ferby toy with a big set of lips.
On it. Yeah, And the other disturbing part was you
had to hold it down because it was constantly trying
to get away, which it was like, why did you
(28:21):
make that design choice? That's very creepy. Yeah, so we'll
get to really creepy stuff later too. By the way, well,
are you talking about tell a del donis. I think
we should take a break before we talk about that
about tell adul donis. Let's take a break alright, We're
(29:01):
back to talk about telldil donics. It's funny, like I
can't say lover, but I have no problem saying telldul donics. Yeah.
So of course they called it that. It needs some
like nineties club like background beat with like telldulics. Yeah.
Maybe we'll see if Noah whip us up one. Alright,
(29:23):
So tell adul Donix is the development of automated sex
toys controlled by either a program or remote user. Right,
so technically, if kissing it could be construed as sex,
the kissinger is a form of teleodul donis. Yes, and
(29:46):
the basis of telldul donics as you have some sort
of um uh sex toy, I guess it's a good
way to put it. That's a great way to put it.
And that sex toy is connected to the internet. Um
and like you said, it can be controlled by somebody
else on the other end, or a program or like
a video that's um pre programmed to interact with your
(30:10):
sex toy. Right. Um, the both of those are are
gonna be huge, But it seems like the it seems
like the progression is more toward remote sex. Right. So
the upshot of it is that you have two separate
sex toys, um with some distance between them, connected to
(30:34):
the Internet, and the people manipulating them on either side
are receiving the sense information, the tactile information from the
other's sex toy into their sex toy and is responding
to it in kind. How is that? Uh, that's a
good you navigated those waters. Thank you. If it sounds
(30:56):
like the word itself sounds like something from the seventies,
it's because it is. Um. It was coined in nine
by a guy named Ted Nelson. Uh. And he was
talking about you know, future where you have remote sex
with those those real feelings of touch transmitted through computers. Um.
So he was really kind of ahead of the game there. Um.
And one thing they compare it to uh, it's also
(31:19):
cyber del Donis or telesildnix Um. One kind of non
sexy thing that they will liken it too is the
the vibrating uh video game controller rumble pack. Yeah, but
I mean they all have it now, and it's if
you play video games, that's a big part of it.
You know, it really adds. It adds a lot to
(31:42):
the game played. Um when you feel like the rumble
of like a car crash or an explosion or something,
and you know it's kind of subtle, but it's just
such a part of gaming now. If it went away,
people would be like, you know, what's what's going on?
It's not nearly as good, right, Okay, So now imagine that,
like your controller rumbling a little bit, and the effect
that that has on you if you if you think
(32:03):
about it, like especially with the N sixty four rumble pack,
the first one I believe, which is haptic technology, right, Yeah,
I remember when that came out. It was pretty awesome,
and it was awesome, but if you think about it,
basically your controller just shook and it didn't necessarily faithfully
recreate whatever it was supposed to be recreating, but that
that extra sense that was being manipulated caused your brain
(32:25):
to just go wild. Your imagination just ran wild, and
it really enhanced it, like you said, right, yeah, it's
gotten a lot better too. But how they do it? Now?
Imagine you take that out of your controller and out
of your hands and apply it to say, your sex toy, right,
and now you're developing sex toys that have an amazing
(32:47):
degree of precision in recreating temperature, moisture, level, um pressure, attention, torque, horsepower,
all this stuff. Right, So you've got so the sex
toys are advancing, and then their ability, their bi directional
ability to receive information and transmit information to another sex toy,
(33:10):
which is then capable of recreating and then sending its
own information, means that you can have virtual sex across
the internet using sex toys and experiencing a real techtile
sensation from it. Yeah, and these are the ones where
mostly I saw that they were trying to target, uh,
couples that are in long distance relationships or when you're
(33:34):
away from each other for business travel or whatever that
you can you can sink up your sex toys in
real time, so the things that you're doing are being
felt on the other end exactly But a good example
of this is the love Pals, which if you're a
sex toy manufacturer, step up the names, shall we. Oh
(33:57):
it's always been that way. Love Pals with the z
um Yeah, of course. But they came up with a
pair of um sexy choice called Zeus and Hera and
and they're exactly what we're describing, and from what I
can gather, they're basically the cutting edge of it. Yeah,
I mean I looked up there were they list a
few in this article Real Touch from two thousand nine
(34:20):
seems like it completely went away. There was one in
two thousand eleven called love Lovins, not with a z
surprisingly Um, and they had the Iman and the Eye Lady,
and that I look that up. They had Max and
Nora which were there. It was a male master bader
(34:41):
which is a machine that does it for you, and
a female stimulator and they named them Max and Nora.
Is very cute and they worked through bluetooth in their
phone app. But um, the last I saw was there
was an indie Go go from a couple of years
ago that was half funded and posed. So the only
(35:01):
one that I've seen that has really and I don't
know about taken off because I don't know they're sales,
but it seems like it's a legit thing that's out there.
Is the love Pals, Well did you look up the winds?
So we got that article from the website of a
company called kirou k I I R O O. Yeah,
and they have their own thing going. That's actually what
um doing well too. The onyx, yeah, the onyx and
(35:22):
the pearl, yes, yeah. And the onyx is the male
uh buddy, right, and the pearl is the female buddy yeah. Uh.
And these things look like you know that the right
out of the Apple Store. I don't know if you
saw pictures, but they're obviously trying to make them like
take them out of the back rooms of Spencer Gifts
(35:43):
and bring them to the forefront of Like, look at
this thing. It looks like you're you know, it looks
like any any Apple device you would find. It's exactly.
It's futuristic looking. Uh. You can put it in your dishwasher,
you can leave it on your coffee table and your
parents could come over. They'll have no idea exactly, doesn't
have any weird spikes or nubs. Right, You don't get
(36:05):
like a free trial of um, you know, simulated pot
with it. What's that stuff called? I have no idea,
you know, like simulated like um fake pot that you
could buy it a head shop. Oh yeah, I think
I know what you're talking about. I can't remember. It's
called spice. Yes, spice. You get a little baggy of
(36:27):
spice for free with it. They're like, we simulate everything,
all right. So we're joking around a lot. But um,
there's a man named Dr Stewart Milloy and he created
something called the Orgasmatron and again that's kind of a
goofy name, but he created in two thousand eight, and
this one actually sends an electrical pulse through the nerves
(36:48):
of the spinal cord and basically the idea is it
could potentially help women who either cannot or last the
ability to experience and orgasm to regain that with this device. Yeah,
which is pretty amazing. Yeah. Well he named I should
say he named the after the the machine and Woody
(37:10):
Allen Sleeper nine three, right, But apparently he stumbled upon
this idea because he is a pain doctor. But he
uses um electrodes in the brain to to cut down
on pain and chronic pain patients and he was working
on one woman um and apparently during the procedure, so
(37:30):
he knows where the electrodes should go. The patient has
to be conscious, so they just give you a local
anesthetic and take off the top of your head and
then he gets in there and fiddles around. It's like
hell Raiser basically right. And as he was doing it,
he hit the spot and he said that the um.
The patient began to quote exclaim in fat emphatically and
(37:52):
he stops him. He's like, what's going on, what's what
are you experiencing? And she's like, you need to teach
my husband how to do that, and he's like, huh.
People would love this. But I was reading Chuck the
Scientific you no New Scientist article on it, and they
said that his orgasmatron received a limp reception from the
(38:14):
scientific community. They're better than that, they said, limp reception.
They're better than that. Apparently not. So we we've covered touch.
Touch isn't going to be a very important one pretty soon.
There's this thing called the Illusion VR body Suit, and
it's basically a hack together version of what will ultimately
be what everybody's wearing in the future, which is a
(38:36):
full haptic body suit with VR, which is really important.
Next step as well, UM pornography combined with some sort
of UM sex toy that works automatically. Yes, yeah, so
(38:58):
the idea, I mean, you've heard of Oculus off the
you know, probably the most advanced VR system going now,
at least as far as I know. I'm not up
to date on the latest with that stuff, but it's
supposed to be great. So you know, you're talking about
a future where you, I guess sound is covered that
with the invention of headphones, it's kind of all you
need there, but throw on the headphones, throw on the
(39:19):
Oculus rift uh, strap into your teledul donic system, and
you could you know, the range of things that can
happen there are either just long distance sex with your
lover or potentially weird things like, hey, do you want
(39:40):
to have sex with uh Jennifer Lopez, Well, we've got
a program you can pay for and do that, and
Jennifer Lopez is really mad, Well yeah, you know, or
or UM I think another another potential that a lot
of people are worried about from this is is UM
(40:00):
VR especially gets more and more realistic. Are people just
acting out there just darkest darkest fantasies, and there's a
lot of UM. There's a lot of debate right now
over ethically, morally and legally how acceptable that is. You know.
So one of the big discussions about UM internet pornography
(40:24):
right now is as we're reaching this ability to UM
pretty accurately simulate, although a lot of it's not very accurate,
like even good c g I is still clearly c
g I, and some of it dips into the uncanny valley.
But as we pass out of the uncanny valley and
get like more and more realistic, the question is is, well,
(40:44):
if you have people who UM are engaged in victimizing
other people in real life out of compulsion or something
like that. Like there's a lot of debate over whether
pedophilia is actually based on brain chemistry, which would take
it out of the realm of choice. Right, So, let's
(41:05):
say you believe that PEDOPHILIAX people, Yeah, pedophilis pedophiles, that's right.
If you believe that pedophiles don't have a choice in
their just their their decisions, their compulsions UM, and that
they have to carry this out, it's just basically castrate themselves,
(41:26):
is it morally acceptable to give these people a virtual
simulation of that, yes, and in which case it will
satisfy their compulsion while at the same time preventing them
from carrying out this compulsion in real life. So so
in real life no one is being harmed, but you're
still giving over a virtual kid for a pedophile to
(41:51):
do whatever with. Yeah, that is the slippery uts of slopes,
because if someone were to argue that, someone I'm very
right fully would argue that who's saying that satisfying that
and not building up two act out on that for real?
You know? Yeah, yeah, And that's that's a lot of
(42:11):
a lot of concern coming from the other end as
well as that, UM as we get more and more
into this incredibly rendered um VR sex that you can
actually feel in sense and all that as well, that
it will you know, the fact that it's VR will
make people who otherwise in real life wouldn't have said, well,
(42:33):
you know what happens if I um choke this avatar
to death while we're doing it. Let's see what that's like,
And then they'll find out that they actually like that
and they might want to try it in real life.
Oh yeah, I mean as soon as this stuff like
is out there, there's gonna be someone selling rape and
murder fantasy software and I just don't see how that
(42:54):
could lead to anything good. Well, but that's the I mean,
that's the long term debate, you know, Like people have
said the thing about violent video games, there's there's never
been a body of of study that shows that violent
video games actually do lead to increased violence in real life.
So I mean, is the same thing true for um,
(43:17):
for sex freaky sex. Well, all right, people can turn
it off because Chuck's opinion is coming emvoy. People don't
like it when I say opinionated things. Some people do.
I don't remember if I covered this much on our
on our episode about video game violence, but I've played
a lot of violent video games more in the last
(43:38):
two years, and my feeling is that you may not
be able to pinpoint that as a cause, but I
think it can be a factor and a tipping point
to someone who was teetering on that edge of carrying
out a violent act. Yeah, that's that's my I firmly
believe that because I am a non violent grown man,
(43:59):
and when you play these game sames enough, you find
yourself driving around and having these thoughts like not that
I really would do these things, but they pop into
your head, just like the same way used to have
Tetris streams. When I played Tetris too much and I
would not even dreams like waking dreams. I would walk
into a room and see boxes be like, oh, you
could arrange these in a different way. It like has
a way of kind of taking your brain over and
(44:20):
then you take out your aggression on the box. But
I think it definitely absolutely can be a a factor
and a tipping point if someone is close. Yeah. Again,
I mean it's anecdotal, but you prefaced it with the
fact that that's your opinions, just my opinion, but that's
your experience too, you know. Yeah. And I'm not saying
like band violent video games because like the lion share
(44:42):
of people can play these things with no problem. But uh,
I don't know, it's it's tricky. One of the other
problems with it, too, Chuck, is that as we get
more and more into recreating the sensation of sex through
vr UM, the possibility of sexual assault is expected to
just skyrocket. Virtual sexual assault and apparently it's already happened. Um.
(45:06):
There's a writer named Jordan bell Air, and she was
playing a VR game called quiver Um within multiplayer mode,
and she said that um, her voice sold her out
as a woman, revealed she was a woman, but other
than that, her avatar looked like a man. And then
(45:28):
one of the other players just started chasing her and
groping her and rubbing her um in her uh where
her bathing suit covers and she um. She said that
she felt genuinely violated by it. I'm sure this is
without any kind of haptic technology whatsoever. This is strictly visual,
and she still felt violated. So we're she wearing like
(45:50):
a haptic body suit so she could feel what her
avatar was feeling. What's the difference between somebody doing that
in real life and somebody doing it virtually, I think
to me the answer is is none. There is no
difference for the end user, for the the victim is
another way to put it. The victim is going to
experiences the same because your brain is relying on sensory
(46:13):
input to determine, say, whether a touch is comfortable or
welcomed or unwelcomed or violating, and whether it's being recreated
by a computer. Your mind isn't going to make any
distinction from that. And you're tho, so the violation is
through and through real and and again that there's that
potential where because it's not in real life and because
(46:37):
of the anonymity that the Internet affords, that the possibility
of that happening can just could really explode. Yeah, somebody
needs to come up with the game called a game
like that called affirmative consent, you know, where everything is
just above board. You introduce yourself and you get to
(46:58):
know each other and you say, I like to be
your lover. Can I touch you there? Sure? No? Okay,
well I'll just back out of the room slowly. So
the one thing we haven't talked about is smell as
far as sensory experience goes. And some people may uh
discount smell or the importance of smell and sexuality, but
(47:20):
I have always been long championed smell as the one
of the underrated uh senses when it comes to sexy times. Uh.
And if you do think, oh, like it's not the
big of a deal, think about if you've ever had
a time or smell has ruined something in sexy time.
So if you do like think smells not that big
(47:42):
of a deal. We're not. Just don't think of just
good smells, like oh, somebody's perfumer cologne, like, think of
like bad smells. How that can turn something wrong. Well,
Robert actually makes a pretty good point in this article.
He says that one out of every fifty gens lover
in the human genome concern sense, yeah, or smell. The
sense of smell. Yeah. I think every husband has been
(48:05):
told at some point, like, why don't you go take
a shower first? You know you were you were just
working in the yard. Sure, there's nothing sexy about that. Yeah,
except the smell of grass is pretty great to grass um.
But there was a company chuck a few years back.
I think they went under around two thousand one or
(48:25):
two thousand two, and the company is called digit Sense,
and they had something called the I Smell and it
was connected to your computer. And the whole idea was
that they had to say, you know how, you have
cyan magenta um colors, yellow, and black? Is that right?
C M y K Yeah, And you can make millions
(48:48):
millions of colors based from those four pigments. These guys
were trying to do the same thing with smells. Come
up with four basic sense that you could make virtually
any smell with right, and uh, it's amazing. It's so
sad to me that they it didn't go anywhere, but
it's like, come back, digit sense, do it now, like
(49:10):
we're ready. Yeah, this would be so amazing if like
the whole thing was, you'd be on the Internet and
there'd be a little, um, a little pixel on the
web page that triggered your eye smell to produce a
certain sent It sent the information how long it should
be there for, how intense whatever. So you're looking at
elephant pictures and you can smell the elephant poop right
(49:33):
there in the room with Yeah, there's this other cool
aspect Robert points out to which is um. The addition
of this smell and taste to this experience and touch
even it lightens the burden on the visuals. So it's
something called cross mode all attention effects uh in in
(49:54):
science communities, and it basically it's the way the brain
prioritizes century input. UM. Like you know, if you're sitting
on this and this is a great example uses if
you're sitting on the sofa and you're just sitting there,
you might feel the sense of the sofa cushion under
your arm and under your butt. But then someone comes
over and kisses you, and your brain goes, well, hey,
(50:19):
and you don't feel the sofa cushion under your butt anymore.
You feel the lips against your lover's lips, and your
bow tie spins around. But that's the real thing. It's
cross model attention effects. It's like literally the brain prioritizing uh,
sensory input. Yeah, and apparently also one of the aspects
of it too, is that when you have the more
(50:43):
senses you have giving you information about a particular thing,
the less any one particular sense has to carry the load.
And again, up to this point, our sense of vision
and our sense of hearing have been doing all of
the heavy lifting. So if you add smell, if you
managed to add taste, if you managed to add touch,
(51:03):
the the like, just how visually stunning the the VR
pornography has to be. Is it comes down several notches.
It doesn't have to be as good because these other
senses are making up the slack. Well, I mean, phone
sex was just audio, right, I mean I said, was
(51:24):
imagine that's still a thing, But um, did you ever
see Shortcuts the Robert Altman movie. Remember Jennifer Jason Lee
was a phone sex operator. She's like, you know, feeding
her baby and ironing, and like her husband's in the
other Chrispin is in the other room. God rest his soul.
Oh Chris Pinn died huh two thousand and sixteen. Oh no, no, no, no,
(51:45):
years ago, Crispin. Yeah, but anyway, that was always kind
of thought. That was funny. Like anyone who thinks the
phone sex person is is right enjoying themselves like you are.
They really sold themselves. Uh. And Robert, I do want
to read this one great sentence from his article here. Uh,
(52:05):
there are people at the University of York's audio laboratory
who are working to employ this cross model attention effects
and really just fine tune it all. And he said
here in his last sentence, They've even considered employing a
mouthpiece to simulate different textures against the tongue in mouth
for virtual food chewing, they claim. M Man. Then, then
(52:30):
I think Robert navigated some pretty tricky waters himself. Now
he did, well, it's a good article. I just yeah, yeah,
the lover's thing. Yeah, uh, you got anything else, no, sir? Uh?
We'll want to give a shout out to um Tracy
Clark Floory from Vocative for the UH the Ethics of
(52:51):
of VR sex stuff, UM kill Kei rou who gave
us the televildonic stuff, and of course are and Robert
Lamb who wrote the whole article. Right, yeah, stuff to
blow your mind. Did good show. If you want to
know more about future sex, you can type those words
into the search bar and what comes up will be
wowee wow wow. And since I said that it's time
(53:13):
for listener mail, I'm doing something I out normally do
because I didn't have one prepared. I'm just gonna randomly
pull one up. We have to do administrative details against soon. Yeah,
I'm gotting some good stuff. By the way, thank you
to the people that send an emails saying that UH
(53:35):
an English speaker saying junta is completely correct. Whatever I know.
You like to show off your your flair. You're Latin
American flair. My my heat, my Latin heat. All right?
I found one, Hey, guys for starters. I love the show.
I got hooked on s U s K. People still
(53:59):
do that occasionally. It's funny. Uh SUSK and even had
iTunes to do the download all and I'm turning through
them all. Just got done listening to the soilent episode
and the listener mail. You mentioned how the breastfeeding episode
was so well received, So was there an episode and
stuff you should know history, he said, s Y s K.
The second time, by the way, that was chock full
(54:19):
of hate mail. Would be a cool factoid of what
your greatest bomb was. Maybe parallel that with your top
five shows of all time to smooth it over. Well,
I'm not gonna do that, but it's a lot of asks.
Yeah that is from John uh Navicus Navicus and um boy.
(54:41):
You know what, we got a lot of bad mail
recently about artificial sweeteners. I've noticed. Oh yeah, yeah, people
are kind of mad. Some people are I think they're
all like Um from the Splendid Family. But yeah, that
one set people off to an extent. We also got
a lot out of kudos for that one. The one
(55:02):
John Um to me that stands out that we got
the most hate mail for UM is not necessarily our
biggest bomb, but it was homelessness or homelessness episode. Sure,
we got tons and tons and tons of negative emails
from people who are basically like homeless people are there
because they're lazy. Stop telling people to be nice to them.
(55:25):
And uh, probably more than any other episode we've ever done.
I would say that's the one that has that we
got the most hate mail for. What about You? Uh
yeah probably so, Um, yeah, I think so. I think objectively,
that is the one by far that we got the
most hate mail for. Yeah, and we've been on record
(55:45):
about that, and we even got a mail just last
week about that episode saying, hey, I know you guys
get a lot of flak for this one, and they
send us an email of support, which is nice. Thank
you to whoever wrote that. That was very nice. Yeah.
So I'm gonna say artificial sweeteners and homelessness. Uh yeah,
It's not like those emails like made me reconsider my
stance on how I feel about homeless people or whatever.
(56:05):
But it just sucks to hear angry stuff from that
many people about something that you think is kind of
brain dead, you know. Um, well, all right, if you
want to get in touch with us, like John did,
thanks for the email, John, you can tweet to us.
I'm at Josh M clark and at s Y s
K podcast. Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that
(56:27):
Stuff you Should Know on Facebook. You can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot
com and has always hang out with us at our
home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. Sex sex
sex sex sex sex sex x sex sex x x
(00:23):
sex sex x sex. I was gonna say we should
do a C O A, but maybe that qualifies. I
think so too. Uh, parents, this is going to be
a show that you may I want your kids to
listen to. We'll just didn't say that. Yeah, it's about
some adult business, that's right. Yeah, freaky stuff. Goodness, how
(00:44):
are you? I'm doing good. I still have a little
bit of the the nose juice for the most part.
I'm I'm good. My energy is up. You dude, I
have to show you next time I blow my nose,
I have to show you. This looks like it's it's
oh no, no, no, no no. It's like Cheetos colored
(01:06):
and intensity. I I've never seen anything like it before,
and it's coming out of my head. That's weird, orange
orange yellow day glow. Well, I might as well talk
about my sickness. Yeah, how are you feeling well? I
had as you know, um and as you also even further, No,
about once a year I get a stomach flu. Even
(01:27):
though I think I took last year off, I don't
think I ever got it last year. I don't think
you did either. But uh so, my daughter waits eighteen
full months before she throws up for the first time,
which is a nice run, and she comes in the
kitchen the other she's like Jerry Seinfeld had really long
run too. She comes in the kitchen and just projectile
vomits all over the place out of nowhere, and um,
(01:51):
you know, isn't feeling well and has some like uh
some some diarrhya going on. Why this show was really
getting off to a gross start. But two days after that,
I'm like, I'm invincible, Like I've I've avoided this. That's
a bad thing, I think. I hope you didn't say
it out loud. I think I might have. And then
a two days ago at four pm, it's like, I
(02:14):
feel a little weird. Five minutes later I was throwing up.
And then six hours after me, it hit Emily. So
she was able to at least care for our child
until she went to bed, and then she was like,
I'm not feeling so good either, And then my mom
thankfully came through and uh and took our child from
(02:34):
the sick house, and then Emily and I literally all
night long, we each had a bathroom at our disposal,
and it was just like every thirty minutes, somebody in
the house was like, man, it was really bad. I mean,
it was just it was one of those things where
we pulled the curtains. We were just like, I didn't
even want to look at each other. It was just gross.
(02:54):
But I'm I'm you know, it's a twenty four hour
thing generally, And yeah, you said you told Jerry that
it was like twenty four hours to the minute. Uh,
pretty much. I mean I started feeling better at about
four or five yesterday. But I'm just just weak, you know, man,
Like it just takes a lot out of you. And
I feel like, of you know, I'm not big on
the ad workout, but I feel like, I know, you
(03:17):
look ripped. Oh dude, I might have Like I feel
like I really might have pulled muscles in my rib
cage from wretching. It's funny, all right, So no one
else is listening anymore. No, let's talk about virtual sex. Yeah,
we chased everyone off. This is a good plan. Hats
off to you, so chuck. Yes, people invented the Internet,
(03:41):
and within about I don't know, eight or nine seconds,
there was a porn side up right, probably yeah, and
since then apparently, um, it's it's been largely overstated. But
but most people associate the Internet, at least in part
with photography. Really, Oh you're kidding, Well, what do you
(04:02):
mean associate? Like like when when you think of the Internet,
you think, well, that's a vast repository of pornography. I
don't know if that's the case. I think a lot
of people do. Okay, Um, but there's a lot of
pornography on the Internet, and in fact, the Internet has
helped just foster pornography into you know, by by by
(04:25):
light speed. It's just virgin right. But it turns out, um,
apparently one study I saw in two thousand and eleven
estimated that only one point five percent of all web
pages are sexual sex based one. Well, that was really
surprised to hear that. Yeah, but I mean that's just
(04:48):
a numbers game. Sure, I mean there's there are literally
millions of porn sites. But doesn't that doesn't that seem
low though? Even even considering the point is people still
all do like sex and pornography, and they like the Internet.
And when it when the thing when they were put together,
everything just blew up. Like apparently now the the Internet
(05:10):
porn industry alone globally is worth something like forty to
fifty billion dollars. I saw that in a two article
in the Economist. That's a ton of cash. Man. That's like,
that's how much like the Disney company is worth. They're
not gonna like that. Their name is you know, I
(05:31):
just pulled that out of the air. Yeah, good choice. Um.
But one of the things, like I said, when when
the Internet um further pornography, it hasn't stopped, it hasn't plateaued.
It's like, oh great, here's a here's a website that's
got porn on it. We've achieved peak Internet pornography. Like that,
(05:51):
some of the most um innovative thoughts to developing the
Internet further has been based on pornography. Yeah, just when
you think they've covered it all, somebody's like, hey, you
like to, uh take a Christmas ham and carve out
a hole and put your foot in it. We got
(06:12):
a website for that, your foot called hamfoot dot com.
Oh man, you better hurry up to trademark that before
we released this episode. And by the way, when you
this article was written by Robert lamb our own uh
colleague here of stuff to blow your mind when you
read it, did you like, how did you feel just
(06:36):
hearing it in Robert's voice? In my head? I don't know,
maybe that's something with it. I just wanted to take
a shower. Like if Robert, if he typed the word
lovers like one more time, I was I was literally
just I don't I've never liked that word with you,
and especially not coming from Robert like him. And I
think he used the word lovers in here like six times,
(06:58):
like you know, he was wearing a silk robe and
he wrote this. Yeah, I can't imagine how much like
graphics stuff got edited out from his first chap uh.
But we're talking about the future of simulated virtual sex,
not necessarily robot sex um because that's a different thing.
(07:21):
And we actually we did a whole episode on that, remember,
I think it was called like will we Marry Robots?
Because we were trying to be above the board. But
we talked a lot about that, but that that's not
what this episode is about now. This is a little
bit more about UM using technology to either simulate sex
or two and I found out in a lot of cases,
(07:44):
and we'll go through it as we talk about some
of these specific things. A lot of them seem geared
towards UH or at least they're marketed as like, hey,
are you in a long distance relationship? Like, you know,
we can help bring you closer by sort of synchronizing
UM phone sex in a way, like just a super
(08:07):
advanced form of phone sex, right right. And that's definitely
like the the genteel way of putting it, because I
think probably more to the point, it's hey, do you, um,
i'd like to have internet sex with people you don't know? Well,
have we got some technology coming down the pike for you. Yeah,
And they don't say, hey, are you super lonely and
(08:27):
like and you know, it's easy to laugh about, like
the lonely dude in his house, but there there are
you know, they're genuine phobias, and like, this could be
a benefit to people who who aren't, like literally aren't
able to certain conditions to go out and have real sex.
You know, sure about that, but it's it's a real
(08:50):
it could be proved to be a real benefit. Yeah,
holders are gonna love this stuff. The the other thing
that that almost sounds like what you just said was
like a mid term goal of UM, of the future
of internet based sex, right, But ultimately from everything I'm seeing,
the ultimate goal, or maybe not even goal, but what
(09:11):
will probably prove to be the ultimate reality is um
that sex will be so improved and and perfectly refined
by science and technology that we we will end up
preferring it and and I mean, like the normal average
human will end up preferring simulated sex over the actual
(09:34):
real thing. I don't know, man, I mean that's a uh,
that's that sounds like one of those things that that
people in fifty years will look back and be like,
what idiots, you know, they got that really wrong. But
it also seems like, I don't know, people like, uh,
people like good sex, you know. Yeah, but it's like
(09:56):
simulated sex is to real sex as soilent is to food.
Well that's that's so I guess we can talk about
it now. Um, there's the basis of it. Is not
like everybody just going to be um these uh just
completely what's the word I'm looking for? Just this crazy
(10:18):
promiscuous people all just having anonymous internet sex with people
all over the internet. That will that will probably be
a very real possibility. Um, I mean it already is,
but this actual virtual like convincingly simulated sex um will
eventually be a possibility. What I've seen that will be
more likely is that people will be in monogamous relationships
(10:40):
like they are now, but rather than doing it, you
will go with your like your separate rooms and do
it remotely using the simulations, right, or it potentially could
be a way too, maybe relieve the uh, the incland
nation to step out on your husband or wife, yeah,
(11:03):
and say, you know what, I'm not gonna cheat on you.
I'm gonna you know, it's just a very technologically advanced
form of masturbation. Sure, But that also, like I can
definitely see couples where say, like, you know, that's fine,
that's great, go get your rocks off with the computer lady.
But I also see like, no, no, no, that's not
that's terrible. Yeah, and I think that's already an issue now,
(11:27):
Like you know, are you sure with porn sites or
porn sites or webcam people like whatever, But when you
when you add this element and This is ultimately what
we're talking about, Chuck, is the progression toward adding actual
physical sensation too to internet sex. Um that this it
(11:50):
just opens up the whole idea of cheating like even further,
you know, like you wouldn't have to use your imagination
any longer because your body is being physically manipulated to
to recreate the sensations of having sex in real life.
I feel like we should take a break. I think
so too. I think we really set this one up
so high that we can't possibly deliver from now on.
(12:13):
All right, well, let's take a break and uh, I'm
gonna go have a talk with Robert Lamb and we'll
be back right after this. All right. So Robert Lamb
(12:47):
points out that every lover's embrace is essentially since data.
And that's true. It's um, you know, it's touch, smell, uh, sound,
it's it's like all the sensory data that we get
from you know, eating an apple or something is the
same with sex the sexy times. But he asked a
(13:10):
very pertinent question here, and that's kind of what we're
after is how far can you go to digitize and
transmit that information? And uh, touch is probably the best
the obvious starting point, right exactly, because if you step
back and you look at the the landscape of internet
sexuality today, right, it's all all of it is visual,
(13:35):
the entire thing. I mean there's audio too, so it
is um oral and visual. And I mean the au
are a l um Now. I had a joke I
had to really fight to not say out loud, well
email it to me, okay, um. But so basically, the
the current state of internet sex uses your eyes and
(13:58):
your ears, and that's it, right, yeah, And everything that
we have is based on that, and there's but that's
that's not to say that that's not going to play
a part in the future of sex. It's just that's
the bedrock, the basis that's been laid, and now they're
trying to develop it based on that bedrock. And like
you said, the next step is touch. Yeah, and if
(14:20):
we're going to talk about technology and touch, um haptic technology,
which we've talked about. We've talked about this before, haven't
we in some capacity? Surely maybe it was a trans
cranial The thinking cap was that maybe I don't know,
it doesn't ring a bell to me, honestly, all Right, Well, anyway,
haptic technology is that that's gonna have a lot of applications.
(14:44):
It's essentially I mean, if you're talking about uh, non
sexy time stuff. It ranges from uh, telesurgery like literally
a doctor being able to perform a surgery that's not
in the room, um, which could be amazing, you know,
in a lifet having technology or like military training, space,
NASA space exploration, stuff like that. But it's essentially technology
(15:10):
that uh is. It's it's wearable. I mean they talk
about gloves a lot, but it takes it can take
the form of a shirt that you wear that sends,
you know, pulses of stimulation through that device, whether it's
a glove or a shirt to your body, right exactly.
So it's it recreates the sensation of touch, right. Yeah.
(15:32):
And the weird thing is when I started researching this,
I was like, you know, what is touch? You take
it for granted, but um, one of the things that
they're going for is when you when you touch something,
what you're really doing. Like let's say you pick up
a vase. Yes, you're you're picking it up, but as
far as your sense of touch is concerned, that vase
(15:54):
is exerting pressure on the inside of your hand, and
haptic gloves in particular are concerned with recreating that pressure
um against the inside of your hand to make it
feel like when you're looking online and you're virtually grabbing
a vase that in real life, the pressure that you
(16:15):
would normally be feeling is being recreated by a number
of different means. And they've got a lot of different
technologies that are competing right now in the prototype space
for coming up with this kind of haptic technology that
can recreate it. Like, there's one did you see that
thing I sent you about the haptic glove that uses ultrasound. Yeah,
that's out of the University of Sussex in uh jolly
(16:38):
old England, and it's called skin Haptics is a system
and yeah, he uses ultrasound pulsing, this focusing basically this
haptic feedback onto the surface of your skin so it
feels like I mean, right now, it's not just like
sexy stuff they're talking about, uh, like a like an
(16:58):
interface that doesn't exist in front of you, right right.
So there there's a couple of different ones. One actually
uses ultrasound to disturb the air in mid air so
when you go to press a button with your finger,
the ultrasound a non existent button, right exactly. Um, the
ultrasound creates an enough air turbulence where your fingers going
(17:22):
that you're you get a bit of resistance from it.
You feel pressure, which is awesome. Yeah, it's amazing. This
other the other skin I think skin haptics version, actually
sends the the ultrasound pulse through your hand so that
you feel it from its pulsing from the back of
your hand through your hand, and then the sensation is
(17:43):
being felt on your palm, so it's recreating it coming
in the reverse direction. But it feels like, say you're
picking up a vase. Yeah, and now is that with
a glove or is that just the ultrasound through the air.
That second one is with the gloves, So so the
other one is like, say a screen that's mounted next
(18:04):
to an oven is using ultrasound from the screen on
the countertop to disturb the air above it in mid air.
That's different. The the glove is sending it from the
back of your hand to the front of your hand.
And I keep saying it's like you're grabbing a base.
But really, with what we're talking about. It's they're trying
to recreate what it feels like to say, grab a boob.
(18:28):
I mean, that's what they're doing here, right. So so
you know the connect controller for I think Microsoft came
out with it for Xbox a few years back, and
um like, within literally within a month, there was an
open source controller. It still is and within a month
somebody released a um like a connect porn game. Sure, right,
(18:52):
And so if you look at the videos of this,
did you see any of them, uh of the Xbox
thing or the other thing, the Xbox one, No, I
did not see that one. So it's basically the demo
is a guy like kind of feeling up a c
G I lady, right, okay, And and if what he's
(19:14):
doing is it's all visual. What they're trying to get
is with with haptic devices is that visual thing, but
then you will feel what you're seeing on screen. That's
that's the next step that people are working on as
far as the Internet sex is going, Yeah, trying to
synchronize well, well we'll get to that, but yeah, trying
(19:35):
to synchronize these things to where you're looking at something
and if you and it just matches up the feel
and the and the visual all matches up right, So
you get the visual to begin with, that's already done.
That now you have, thanks to the say VR connect,
you can move your hand in this world and it
translates onto your computer the virtual world, and then that
(19:58):
so that's done. Then next step again is recreating the
sensation of touch from that virtual world into this world.
So I thought you were talking about the um that
that website, the sex game website. Oh three d x chat.
Did you go to that one? Yes? Holy cow? Yeah
(20:21):
warning warning, uh, very graphic website. Yeah, we're not saying
that to all the fourteen year olds because I think
every fourteen year old live has been there, but the
year old had not. Yeah, I hadn't either. I had
no idea. It was a thing. I was like, what
is that kept popping up in uh in in research,
and I went and looked. I was like, no way, Yeah,
(20:44):
it's um that is a sex game and it's you.
You're you have an avatar, but game game is uh,
you're using that loosely. It's almost like second life. It's
like a hangout, like virtual chat, like life based. Yeah,
like you you have a you design your your dude,
to your lady, and you go into a bar and
(21:05):
you're hanging out, and then you take that person back
to your apartment and you have like really graphic uh
you know, animated sex. Right, but the person you're picking
up is an actual person in real life as well.
It's their avatar. It's not like you know, you're you're
picking up a sim or something. Right. So, and that's
that's apparently like really big right now. A year that's
(21:29):
what it cost. Yeah, you get to that's a weird number, man,
I know, and it's not even ninety two. I rounded up.
It's like, I don't I don't know. They found that
was a tipping point. Yeah, exactly, No, they won't pay
ninety nine. They'll pay. We pulled a few perverts in
our town and they said a hundred dollars, no way.
(21:50):
But they got confused around the marks. So that we
want that, so, Chuck, we we were largely talking about
with Haptick devices, um the love it's not just the glove.
That's a that's a big first step, but ultimately the
goal is going to be a basically a haptic full
body suit to where this the pressure, incense and warmth
(22:12):
and everything that has to do with touch is recreated
all over your body because your hands are great, but
you know, there's still just your hands. As far as
internet sex is concerned, that that full body haptic suit
is going to be the holy Grail, and apparently it's
not that far off. There's a a guy who founded,
(22:32):
um a company called Shadow Robot Company. Uh that sounds creepy. Well,
actually they make anthropomorphic robot hands for um like people
who have had a limb ampitated. It's like a legit
robot um company that he just happened to be quoted right.
His name was Richard Greenhill, and he said that, um,
(22:54):
I think it was last year in an article he
said that hap full body haptic suits are just a
few years away. Probably Yeah, that'll be huge. But in
the meantime, there's been these baby steps that have been
taken over the years. And one of the first I
guess kind of prototypes of a haptic suit was a
haptic shirt called the hug Shirt. Yeah, I don't. I looked.
(23:17):
I went to their website and I didn't see I
mean it said by it now, So I kept on
it to see how much it was and then it
didn't come up so I don't know if it's not
at market yet, but the idea is is it's a
shirt and this is the you know, the most g
rated part of this show, because it's a shirt that
simulates a hug, yeah, which is pretty sweet. Company UK
(23:38):
company called Cute Circuit and I think they came out
with it back in like two thousand one or two,
and they I think they released them for sale in
like two thousand five or six or something like that.
But basically, you are wearing your, um, your hug shirt.
You're connected to the internet via the hug Shirt app,
and then you're you're, UM, your lover, your lover. Man,
(24:04):
I was gonna say a little sweetie was on the
other end, but lovers fine, um, and they're wearing their
hug shirt connected to the app. So when you simulate
a hug, right, you hug yourself wearing the hug shirt,
it transmits that hug to your right and they feel
(24:25):
the sensation of the hug you just sent transmitted through
their hug shirt. It's pretty it's awfully sweet. Yeah. I
wanted to I want to know what this feels like,
you know, I wanted to sample one. Yeah, well, I
mean We're on a pretty great streak of not doing
the stuff that we're talking about, So why start now?
You know? Well I couldn't, you know, I tried to
buy one, but I didn't see where you could. Did
(24:47):
you see a very nice man named Don Kent who
gave us plenty of the Elder before sent us a
box of soiling? Oh wonderful. Yeah, well, let's try it
on air. Okay, okay, Oh man, that's a eight idea.
We'll have to set it up in another episode just
so that it has all the proper introductions. We'll just
say this so that everybody can get really excited about it. Yeah,
(25:08):
I'm excited already. Uh. So the other simulator that um
is in prototype mode. There's something called the Kiss Transmitter
from Kajumoto Laboratory at Tokyo's University of electro Communications, and um,
did you see this thing? Yeah? I was very much
turned off by that. Yeah, it's at least right now
(25:29):
unless the prototype has advanced. It's supposed to simulate French kissing.
But it was a box. Uh and it looked like
a bent drinking straw that just went around in a circle. Yeah.
And they showed some poor undergrad who is having to
demonstrate it, and they were doing close ups of his
(25:50):
mouth and this thing swirling around with It's not pleasant
at all, No UM, but the Kissinger, well hold on
with just with the with the the kiss transmitter. I
think the idea is eventually that that um straw will
be a tongue, which would makes a lot more sense.
But the trick to this is it doesn't just spin
in a circle. What it does is it uh, it
(26:13):
works with you like when you are moving your tongue around,
it is reciprocating in likewise fashion. So it's not just
willie Nilly spinning around in a circle. It's it's it's
smarter than that. Yeah. So there was this other thing
called the Kissinger. I did see that that was really creepy.
So that one, this one makes a lot more sense
(26:36):
to me. It's it's actually the PhD project of Emma
yan Zang out of the City University of London and
UM this thing. It was originally a box that connected
via USB to your laptop that you kissed and it
had like kind of almost cartoonish lips attached to it
or whatever. And then the newer prototype is this UM
(26:59):
this thing that you connect to, say your iPhone, and
so it's it's connected to the web through an app.
And when it's got this, I guess the mouth interface
is just this um, this pad almost a touchpad area
that you kiss, right, yes, And as you're kissing it,
(27:19):
it is taking in the movement and pressure of your lips,
sending it through the app to your lover yeah um
on the other end, and recreates the kiss to them.
But what's cool is it's bidirectional, so while they're kissing
you back, you're receiving their kiss. Yeah. What's the disturbing
(27:40):
part to me is is that it comes in the
form of like a little round bunny rabbit. Oh yeah, yeah,
you didn't see it. Oh that was the first version. Oh,
the second version is conversion. The second version is much
less like they basically threw out any attempt to make
it look like a mouth. It just it funk sans
(28:00):
like it. It doesn't look like it because I think
they probably you were probably in the majority of people
who are like, I'm not kissing that thing. Well, yeah,
I mean it was a little it looked like a
little round like Ferby toy with a big set of lips.
On it. Yeah, And the other disturbing part was you
had to hold it down because it was constantly trying
to get away, which it was like, why did you
(28:21):
make that design choice? That's very creepy. Yeah, so we'll
get to really creepy stuff later too. By the way, well,
are you talking about tell a del donis. I think
we should take a break before we talk about that
about tell adul donis. Let's take a break alright, We're
(29:01):
back to talk about telldil donics. It's funny, like I
can't say lover, but I have no problem saying telldul donics. Yeah.
So of course they called it that. It needs some
like nineties club like background beat with like telldulics. Yeah.
Maybe we'll see if Noah whip us up one. Alright,
(29:23):
So tell adul Donix is the development of automated sex
toys controlled by either a program or remote user. Right,
so technically, if kissing it could be construed as sex,
the kissinger is a form of teleodul donis. Yes, and
(29:46):
the basis of telldul donics as you have some sort
of um uh sex toy, I guess it's a good
way to put it. That's a great way to put it.
And that sex toy is connected to the internet. Um
and like you said, it can be controlled by somebody
else on the other end, or a program or like
a video that's um pre programmed to interact with your
(30:10):
sex toy. Right. Um, the both of those are are
gonna be huge, But it seems like the it seems
like the progression is more toward remote sex. Right. So
the upshot of it is that you have two separate
sex toys, um with some distance between them, connected to
(30:34):
the Internet, and the people manipulating them on either side
are receiving the sense information, the tactile information from the
other's sex toy into their sex toy and is responding
to it in kind. How is that? Uh, that's a
good you navigated those waters. Thank you. If it sounds
(30:56):
like the word itself sounds like something from the seventies,
it's because it is. Um. It was coined in nine
by a guy named Ted Nelson. Uh. And he was
talking about you know, future where you have remote sex
with those those real feelings of touch transmitted through computers. Um.
So he was really kind of ahead of the game there. Um.
And one thing they compare it to uh, it's also
(31:19):
cyber del Donis or telesildnix Um. One kind of non
sexy thing that they will liken it too is the
the vibrating uh video game controller rumble pack. Yeah, but
I mean they all have it now, and it's if
you play video games, that's a big part of it.
You know, it really adds. It adds a lot to
(31:42):
the game played. Um when you feel like the rumble
of like a car crash or an explosion or something,
and you know it's kind of subtle, but it's just
such a part of gaming now. If it went away,
people would be like, you know, what's what's going on?
It's not nearly as good, right, Okay, So now imagine that,
like your controller rumbling a little bit, and the effect
that that has on you if you if you think
(32:03):
about it, like especially with the N sixty four rumble pack,
the first one I believe, which is haptic technology, right, Yeah,
I remember when that came out. It was pretty awesome,
and it was awesome, but if you think about it,
basically your controller just shook and it didn't necessarily faithfully
recreate whatever it was supposed to be recreating, but that
that extra sense that was being manipulated caused your brain
(32:25):
to just go wild. Your imagination just ran wild, and
it really enhanced it, like you said, right, yeah, it's
gotten a lot better too. But how they do it? Now?
Imagine you take that out of your controller and out
of your hands and apply it to say, your sex toy, right,
and now you're developing sex toys that have an amazing
(32:47):
degree of precision in recreating temperature, moisture, level, um pressure, attention, torque, horsepower,
all this stuff. Right, So you've got so the sex
toys are advancing, and then their ability, their bi directional
ability to receive information and transmit information to another sex toy,
(33:10):
which is then capable of recreating and then sending its
own information, means that you can have virtual sex across
the internet using sex toys and experiencing a real techtile
sensation from it. Yeah, and these are the ones where
mostly I saw that they were trying to target, uh,
couples that are in long distance relationships or when you're
(33:34):
away from each other for business travel or whatever that
you can you can sink up your sex toys in
real time, so the things that you're doing are being
felt on the other end exactly But a good example
of this is the love Pals, which if you're a
sex toy manufacturer, step up the names, shall we. Oh
(33:57):
it's always been that way. Love Pals with the z
um Yeah, of course. But they came up with a
pair of um sexy choice called Zeus and Hera and
and they're exactly what we're describing, and from what I
can gather, they're basically the cutting edge of it. Yeah,
I mean I looked up there were they list a
few in this article Real Touch from two thousand nine
(34:20):
seems like it completely went away. There was one in
two thousand eleven called love Lovins, not with a z
surprisingly Um, and they had the Iman and the Eye Lady,
and that I look that up. They had Max and
Nora which were there. It was a male master bader
(34:41):
which is a machine that does it for you, and
a female stimulator and they named them Max and Nora.
Is very cute and they worked through bluetooth in their
phone app. But um, the last I saw was there
was an indie Go go from a couple of years
ago that was half funded and posed. So the only
(35:01):
one that I've seen that has really and I don't
know about taken off because I don't know they're sales,
but it seems like it's a legit thing that's out there.
Is the love Pals, Well did you look up the winds?
So we got that article from the website of a
company called kirou k I I R O O. Yeah,
and they have their own thing going. That's actually what
um doing well too. The onyx, yeah, the onyx and
(35:22):
the pearl, yes, yeah. And the onyx is the male
uh buddy, right, and the pearl is the female buddy yeah. Uh.
And these things look like you know that the right
out of the Apple Store. I don't know if you
saw pictures, but they're obviously trying to make them like
take them out of the back rooms of Spencer Gifts
(35:43):
and bring them to the forefront of Like, look at
this thing. It looks like you're you know, it looks
like any any Apple device you would find. It's exactly.
It's futuristic looking. Uh. You can put it in your dishwasher,
you can leave it on your coffee table and your
parents could come over. They'll have no idea exactly, doesn't
have any weird spikes or nubs. Right, You don't get
(36:05):
like a free trial of um, you know, simulated pot
with it. What's that stuff called? I have no idea,
you know, like simulated like um fake pot that you
could buy it a head shop. Oh yeah, I think
I know what you're talking about. I can't remember. It's
called spice. Yes, spice. You get a little baggy of
(36:27):
spice for free with it. They're like, we simulate everything,
all right. So we're joking around a lot. But um,
there's a man named Dr Stewart Milloy and he created
something called the Orgasmatron and again that's kind of a
goofy name, but he created in two thousand eight, and
this one actually sends an electrical pulse through the nerves
(36:48):
of the spinal cord and basically the idea is it
could potentially help women who either cannot or last the
ability to experience and orgasm to regain that with this device. Yeah,
which is pretty amazing. Yeah. Well he named I should
say he named the after the the machine and Woody
(37:10):
Allen Sleeper nine three, right, But apparently he stumbled upon
this idea because he is a pain doctor. But he
uses um electrodes in the brain to to cut down
on pain and chronic pain patients and he was working
on one woman um and apparently during the procedure, so
(37:30):
he knows where the electrodes should go. The patient has
to be conscious, so they just give you a local
anesthetic and take off the top of your head and
then he gets in there and fiddles around. It's like
hell Raiser basically right. And as he was doing it,
he hit the spot and he said that the um.
The patient began to quote exclaim in fat emphatically and
(37:52):
he stops him. He's like, what's going on, what's what
are you experiencing? And she's like, you need to teach
my husband how to do that, and he's like, huh.
People would love this. But I was reading Chuck the
Scientific you no New Scientist article on it, and they
said that his orgasmatron received a limp reception from the
(38:14):
scientific community. They're better than that, they said, limp reception.
They're better than that. Apparently not. So we we've covered touch.
Touch isn't going to be a very important one pretty soon.
There's this thing called the Illusion VR body Suit, and
it's basically a hack together version of what will ultimately
be what everybody's wearing in the future, which is a
(38:36):
full haptic body suit with VR, which is really important.
Next step as well, UM pornography combined with some sort
of UM sex toy that works automatically. Yes, yeah, so
(38:58):
the idea, I mean, you've heard of Oculus off the
you know, probably the most advanced VR system going now,
at least as far as I know. I'm not up
to date on the latest with that stuff, but it's
supposed to be great. So you know, you're talking about
a future where you, I guess sound is covered that
with the invention of headphones, it's kind of all you
need there, but throw on the headphones, throw on the
(39:19):
Oculus rift uh, strap into your teledul donic system, and
you could you know, the range of things that can
happen there are either just long distance sex with your
lover or potentially weird things like, hey, do you want
(39:40):
to have sex with uh Jennifer Lopez, Well, we've got
a program you can pay for and do that, and
Jennifer Lopez is really mad, Well yeah, you know, or
or UM I think another another potential that a lot
of people are worried about from this is is UM
(40:00):
VR especially gets more and more realistic. Are people just
acting out there just darkest darkest fantasies, and there's a
lot of UM. There's a lot of debate right now
over ethically, morally and legally how acceptable that is. You know.
So one of the big discussions about UM internet pornography
(40:24):
right now is as we're reaching this ability to UM
pretty accurately simulate, although a lot of it's not very accurate,
like even good c g I is still clearly c
g I, and some of it dips into the uncanny valley.
But as we pass out of the uncanny valley and
get like more and more realistic, the question is is, well,
(40:44):
if you have people who UM are engaged in victimizing
other people in real life out of compulsion or something
like that. Like there's a lot of debate over whether
pedophilia is actually based on brain chemistry, which would take
it out of the realm of choice. Right, So, let's
(41:05):
say you believe that PEDOPHILIAX people, Yeah, pedophilis pedophiles, that's right.
If you believe that pedophiles don't have a choice in
their just their their decisions, their compulsions UM, and that
they have to carry this out, it's just basically castrate themselves,
(41:26):
is it morally acceptable to give these people a virtual
simulation of that, yes, and in which case it will
satisfy their compulsion while at the same time preventing them
from carrying out this compulsion in real life. So so
in real life no one is being harmed, but you're
still giving over a virtual kid for a pedophile to
(41:51):
do whatever with. Yeah, that is the slippery uts of slopes,
because if someone were to argue that, someone I'm very
right fully would argue that who's saying that satisfying that
and not building up two act out on that for real?
You know? Yeah, yeah, And that's that's a lot of
(42:11):
a lot of concern coming from the other end as
well as that, UM as we get more and more
into this incredibly rendered um VR sex that you can
actually feel in sense and all that as well, that
it will you know, the fact that it's VR will
make people who otherwise in real life wouldn't have said, well,
(42:33):
you know what happens if I um choke this avatar
to death while we're doing it. Let's see what that's like,
And then they'll find out that they actually like that
and they might want to try it in real life.
Oh yeah, I mean as soon as this stuff like
is out there, there's gonna be someone selling rape and
murder fantasy software and I just don't see how that
(42:54):
could lead to anything good. Well, but that's the I mean,
that's the long term debate, you know, Like people have
said the thing about violent video games, there's there's never
been a body of of study that shows that violent
video games actually do lead to increased violence in real life.
So I mean, is the same thing true for um,
(43:17):
for sex freaky sex. Well, all right, people can turn
it off because Chuck's opinion is coming emvoy. People don't
like it when I say opinionated things. Some people do.
I don't remember if I covered this much on our
on our episode about video game violence, but I've played
a lot of violent video games more in the last
(43:38):
two years, and my feeling is that you may not
be able to pinpoint that as a cause, but I
think it can be a factor and a tipping point
to someone who was teetering on that edge of carrying
out a violent act. Yeah, that's that's my I firmly
believe that because I am a non violent grown man,
(43:59):
and when you play these game sames enough, you find
yourself driving around and having these thoughts like not that
I really would do these things, but they pop into
your head, just like the same way used to have
Tetris streams. When I played Tetris too much and I
would not even dreams like waking dreams. I would walk
into a room and see boxes be like, oh, you
could arrange these in a different way. It like has
a way of kind of taking your brain over and
(44:20):
then you take out your aggression on the box. But
I think it definitely absolutely can be a a factor
and a tipping point if someone is close. Yeah. Again,
I mean it's anecdotal, but you prefaced it with the
fact that that's your opinions, just my opinion, but that's
your experience too, you know. Yeah. And I'm not saying
like band violent video games because like the lion share
(44:42):
of people can play these things with no problem. But uh,
I don't know, it's it's tricky. One of the other
problems with it, too, Chuck, is that as we get
more and more into recreating the sensation of sex through
vr UM, the possibility of sexual assault is expected to
just skyrocket. Virtual sexual assault and apparently it's already happened. Um.
(45:06):
There's a writer named Jordan bell Air, and she was
playing a VR game called quiver Um within multiplayer mode,
and she said that um, her voice sold her out
as a woman, revealed she was a woman, but other
than that, her avatar looked like a man. And then
(45:28):
one of the other players just started chasing her and
groping her and rubbing her um in her uh where
her bathing suit covers and she um. She said that
she felt genuinely violated by it. I'm sure this is
without any kind of haptic technology whatsoever. This is strictly visual,
and she still felt violated. So we're she wearing like
(45:50):
a haptic body suit so she could feel what her
avatar was feeling. What's the difference between somebody doing that
in real life and somebody doing it virtually, I think
to me the answer is is none. There is no
difference for the end user, for the the victim is
another way to put it. The victim is going to
experiences the same because your brain is relying on sensory
(46:13):
input to determine, say, whether a touch is comfortable or
welcomed or unwelcomed or violating, and whether it's being recreated
by a computer. Your mind isn't going to make any
distinction from that. And you're tho, so the violation is
through and through real and and again that there's that
potential where because it's not in real life and because
(46:37):
of the anonymity that the Internet affords, that the possibility
of that happening can just could really explode. Yeah, somebody
needs to come up with the game called a game
like that called affirmative consent, you know, where everything is
just above board. You introduce yourself and you get to
(46:58):
know each other and you say, I like to be
your lover. Can I touch you there? Sure? No? Okay,
well I'll just back out of the room slowly. So
the one thing we haven't talked about is smell as
far as sensory experience goes. And some people may uh
discount smell or the importance of smell and sexuality, but
(47:20):
I have always been long championed smell as the one
of the underrated uh senses when it comes to sexy times. Uh.
And if you do think, oh, like it's not the
big of a deal, think about if you've ever had
a time or smell has ruined something in sexy time.
So if you do like think smells not that big
(47:42):
of a deal. We're not. Just don't think of just
good smells, like oh, somebody's perfumer cologne, like, think of
like bad smells. How that can turn something wrong. Well,
Robert actually makes a pretty good point in this article.
He says that one out of every fifty gens lover
in the human genome concern sense, yeah, or smell. The
sense of smell. Yeah. I think every husband has been
(48:05):
told at some point, like, why don't you go take
a shower first? You know you were you were just
working in the yard. Sure, there's nothing sexy about that. Yeah,
except the smell of grass is pretty great to grass um.
But there was a company chuck a few years back.
I think they went under around two thousand one or
(48:25):
two thousand two, and the company is called digit Sense,
and they had something called the I Smell and it
was connected to your computer. And the whole idea was
that they had to say, you know how, you have
cyan magenta um colors, yellow, and black? Is that right?
C M y K Yeah, And you can make millions
(48:48):
millions of colors based from those four pigments. These guys
were trying to do the same thing with smells. Come
up with four basic sense that you could make virtually
any smell with right, and uh, it's amazing. It's so
sad to me that they it didn't go anywhere, but
it's like, come back, digit sense, do it now, like
(49:10):
we're ready. Yeah, this would be so amazing if like
the whole thing was, you'd be on the Internet and
there'd be a little, um, a little pixel on the
web page that triggered your eye smell to produce a
certain sent It sent the information how long it should
be there for, how intense whatever. So you're looking at
elephant pictures and you can smell the elephant poop right
(49:33):
there in the room with Yeah, there's this other cool
aspect Robert points out to which is um. The addition
of this smell and taste to this experience and touch
even it lightens the burden on the visuals. So it's
something called cross mode all attention effects uh in in
(49:54):
science communities, and it basically it's the way the brain
prioritizes century input. UM. Like you know, if you're sitting
on this and this is a great example uses if
you're sitting on the sofa and you're just sitting there,
you might feel the sense of the sofa cushion under
your arm and under your butt. But then someone comes
over and kisses you, and your brain goes, well, hey,
(50:19):
and you don't feel the sofa cushion under your butt anymore.
You feel the lips against your lover's lips, and your
bow tie spins around. But that's the real thing. It's
cross model attention effects. It's like literally the brain prioritizing uh,
sensory input. Yeah, and apparently also one of the aspects
of it too, is that when you have the more
(50:43):
senses you have giving you information about a particular thing,
the less any one particular sense has to carry the load.
And again, up to this point, our sense of vision
and our sense of hearing have been doing all of
the heavy lifting. So if you add smell, if you
managed to add taste, if you managed to add touch,
(51:03):
the the like, just how visually stunning the the VR
pornography has to be. Is it comes down several notches.
It doesn't have to be as good because these other
senses are making up the slack. Well, I mean, phone
sex was just audio, right, I mean I said, was
(51:24):
imagine that's still a thing, But um, did you ever
see Shortcuts the Robert Altman movie. Remember Jennifer Jason Lee
was a phone sex operator. She's like, you know, feeding
her baby and ironing, and like her husband's in the
other Chrispin is in the other room. God rest his soul.
Oh Chris Pinn died huh two thousand and sixteen. Oh no, no, no, no,
(51:45):
years ago, Crispin. Yeah, but anyway, that was always kind
of thought. That was funny. Like anyone who thinks the
phone sex person is is right enjoying themselves like you are.
They really sold themselves. Uh. And Robert, I do want
to read this one great sentence from his article here. Uh,
(52:05):
there are people at the University of York's audio laboratory
who are working to employ this cross model attention effects
and really just fine tune it all. And he said
here in his last sentence, They've even considered employing a
mouthpiece to simulate different textures against the tongue in mouth
for virtual food chewing, they claim. M Man. Then, then
(52:30):
I think Robert navigated some pretty tricky waters himself. Now
he did, well, it's a good article. I just yeah, yeah,
the lover's thing. Yeah, uh, you got anything else, no, sir? Uh?
We'll want to give a shout out to um Tracy
Clark Floory from Vocative for the UH the Ethics of
(52:51):
of VR sex stuff, UM kill Kei rou who gave
us the televildonic stuff, and of course are and Robert
Lamb who wrote the whole article. Right, yeah, stuff to
blow your mind. Did good show. If you want to
know more about future sex, you can type those words
into the search bar and what comes up will be
wowee wow wow. And since I said that it's time
(53:13):
for listener mail, I'm doing something I out normally do
because I didn't have one prepared. I'm just gonna randomly
pull one up. We have to do administrative details against soon. Yeah,
I'm gotting some good stuff. By the way, thank you
to the people that send an emails saying that UH
(53:35):
an English speaker saying junta is completely correct. Whatever I know.
You like to show off your your flair. You're Latin
American flair. My my heat, my Latin heat. All right?
I found one, Hey, guys for starters. I love the show.
I got hooked on s U s K. People still
(53:59):
do that occasionally. It's funny. Uh SUSK and even had
iTunes to do the download all and I'm turning through
them all. Just got done listening to the soilent episode
and the listener mail. You mentioned how the breastfeeding episode
was so well received, So was there an episode and
stuff you should know history, he said, s Y s K.
The second time, by the way, that was chock full
(54:19):
of hate mail. Would be a cool factoid of what
your greatest bomb was. Maybe parallel that with your top
five shows of all time to smooth it over. Well,
I'm not gonna do that, but it's a lot of asks.
Yeah that is from John uh Navicus Navicus and um boy.
(54:41):
You know what, we got a lot of bad mail
recently about artificial sweeteners. I've noticed. Oh yeah, yeah, people
are kind of mad. Some people are I think they're
all like Um from the Splendid Family. But yeah, that
one set people off to an extent. We also got
a lot out of kudos for that one. The one
(55:02):
John Um to me that stands out that we got
the most hate mail for UM is not necessarily our
biggest bomb, but it was homelessness or homelessness episode. Sure,
we got tons and tons and tons of negative emails
from people who are basically like homeless people are there
because they're lazy. Stop telling people to be nice to them.
(55:25):
And uh, probably more than any other episode we've ever done.
I would say that's the one that has that we
got the most hate mail for. What about You? Uh
yeah probably so, Um, yeah, I think so. I think objectively,
that is the one by far that we got the
most hate mail for. Yeah, and we've been on record
(55:45):
about that, and we even got a mail just last
week about that episode saying, hey, I know you guys
get a lot of flak for this one, and they
send us an email of support, which is nice. Thank
you to whoever wrote that. That was very nice. Yeah.
So I'm gonna say artificial sweeteners and homelessness. Uh yeah,
It's not like those emails like made me reconsider my
stance on how I feel about homeless people or whatever.
(56:05):
But it just sucks to hear angry stuff from that
many people about something that you think is kind of
brain dead, you know. Um, well, all right, if you
want to get in touch with us, like John did,
thanks for the email, John, you can tweet to us.
I'm at Josh M clark and at s Y s
K podcast. Chuck's at Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that
(56:27):
Stuff you Should Know on Facebook. You can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot
com and has always hang out with us at our
home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
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